Peter Watts (1) (1958–)

I liked it at first, and I still like the description of the aliens and their ship. The strangeness and all.

But. There are zero likable characters, the flashbacks are totally unnecessary and serve only to show how unlikable the protagonist is, and my biggest problem is the ending. The ending is like the author showing his middle finger and grinning smugly. I know it's hip to be edgy, nihilistic, and all, but it's not my thing. I grew tired of the monologues about things the author seems to find meaningful.

And the vampire...I thought the concept cool, but in the end he too was totally non-relevant. I found it hilarious the he had a regular Finnish name, though. The Finnish translation by J. Pekka Mäkelä was very good.

Rating as a book: 3/5
How I liked the story: 1/5… (more)

Interesting ideas about alien life that experiences the universe in a way far different than humans do. The author did a good job of depicting Rorschach in a terrifying way, while (by the end) explaining why it is the way it is. The human characters themselves also worked. Seeing the events of this book through Siri's eyes made sense, since he's supposed to just be an observer, but we still got to see some (admittedly sudden) change in his character.

The inclusion of vampires in this novel was quite strange. They were between humans & the aliens in terms of perception & cognition, so perhaps one could argue they can help us better understand the aliens. I'm not sure if we necessarily needed to throw vampires into this world to get that understanding, or if it could be done another way that would perhaps fit better with this apparently being hard sci-fi.… (more)